Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: There's a long tradition in audio recording to test someone's microphone,
Speaker 2: you ask them what.
Speaker 1: They had for breakfast. So I put that question to
Speaker 1: today's guest, William Hanson.
Speaker 3: I had two poach tags on some toast.
Speaker 2: If that sounds a bit elaborate for a random breakfast
Speaker 2: at home, you haven't heard the half of it.
Speaker 3: I used a forkin knife. I put a place smat
Speaker 3: down napkin. We did it relatively formally for a Monday.
Speaker 2: Place mats napkins. I can't remember the last time I
Speaker 2: used a cloth napkin for breakfast. I'm not even sure
Speaker 2: I own any cloth napkins.
Speaker 3: Does everybody not have a napkin collection? They should. I
Speaker 3: can strongly applicate for having one, because you know, as
Speaker 3: anyone knows in etiquette, we have four different types of
Speaker 3: napkin size. And I think it's nice to have an array.
Speaker 3: I think a prop an APCIn is so much better
Speaker 3: than a sort of a tatty paper one, or a
Speaker 3: piece of kitchen towel or something like that, which is
Speaker 3: not pleasant and coarse on the lips. And when years ago,
Speaker 3: when I was living in a flat, we had a
Speaker 3: fire that was in the laundry cupboard and the napkins
Speaker 3: were right next door to the fire, and this is
Speaker 3: not what we advised people to do in the case
Speaker 3: of the fire. But I decided to save the napkins
Speaker 3: and was very carefully moving them out whilst the flat
Speaker 3: burned around me.
Speaker 2: This season of The Happiness Lab is all about the
Speaker 2: creative coping strategies real people use to get through their
Speaker 2: lives as joyfully as possible.
Speaker 1: And don't worry, this isn't a show about using napkins.
Speaker 1: William Hansen is a self confessed happy person.
Speaker 3: I think it's better to be happy if you can.
Speaker 3: It's very easy for me to say that, of course,
Speaker 3: but for me, I'm quite happy. I'm sort of consistently
Speaker 3: chip up.
Speaker 2: But aside from being a chip or chap, William is
Speaker 2: a respected expert on etiquette, and he shares the expertise
Speaker 2: on his podcast Help I Sexit My Boss, and in
Speaker 2: a great new book called Just Good Manners. I usually
Speaker 2: associate etiquette with prissy rules about which for it to
Speaker 2: use first at dinner, rules that make the uninitiated feel
Speaker 2: stupid and small.
Speaker 1: But reading William's book showed me how wrong I was.
Speaker 2: Turns out etiquette has more benefits than I realized, because
Speaker 2: thinking deeply about how to behave in the company of
Speaker 2: other people, so that you're polite, considerate, and respectful, that
Speaker 2: can make you feel great too. William's been thinking about
Speaker 2: etiquette since childhood, and as you'll hear, it's made his
Speaker 2: passage through life far smoother and far more enjoyable.
Speaker 3: This will come as no shock, sheer, Laurie. But I
Speaker 3: think I was probably quite a precocious child, and my
Speaker 3: late grandmother gave me a book of etiquette when I
Speaker 3: was twelve for Christmas, and not because I was feral,
Speaker 3: but because she thought I might enjoy it. And I did,
Speaker 3: and it was reluctantly read it because there were more
Speaker 3: exciting presents to be playing with. But I started to
Speaker 3: read it, and as well as it being funny, that
Speaker 3: particular etitquet book, and I think if it had been
Speaker 3: written sort of deathly seriously, I don't think I'd be
Speaker 3: sitting here now. But it opened up this sort of framework,
Speaker 3: most of which you know are certainly the basics. I
Speaker 3: knew because my parents brought me a very nicely and
Speaker 3: we sat at the table for breakfast, lunch, and dinner
Speaker 3: I had to write thank you letters after birthdays in Christmas,
Speaker 3: and we followed this sort of ritual of politets. But
Speaker 3: there were other rules your average person probably didn't know,
Speaker 3: probably doesn't need to know. But I found it helped
Speaker 3: me sort of give structure and confidence that actually in
Speaker 3: certain situations, some of which age twelve or thirteen. When
Speaker 3: I was reading this book, I mean ludicrous. Of course
Speaker 3: I'm not going to be dining with an archbishop tomorrow,
Speaker 3: but I was ready should that happen. And of course
Speaker 3: I get is not just all about dining with archbishops
Speaker 3: and things like that. But it gave me this foot
Speaker 3: up in a positive way because I had chosen to learn,
Speaker 3: and I bought more books because it posed lots of questions,
Speaker 3: and that's really how my interest started.
Speaker 1: Do you think it came to you at a time
Speaker 1: I'm just thinking of like what I was like at thirteen,
Speaker 1: and you know, you're kind of going through awkward puberty
Speaker 1: and things are weird. Do you think it kind of
Speaker 1: helped your social anxiety? Like was it kind of coping
Speaker 1: to kind of dig into those etiquette skills?
Speaker 3: Yes, I think it probably was helping with that and
Speaker 3: knowing how to behave at twelve thirteen. For anyone, we're
Speaker 3: all sort of a little bit all over the sharp
Speaker 3: our hormones and doing all sorts of things as we grow.
Speaker 3: For me, there was the gay thing as well. I
Speaker 3: knew at that age I was gay, but sort of
Speaker 3: hadn't told anyone. It wasn't long after that that I
Speaker 3: did come out. Now whether actually etiquette sort of helped me.
Speaker 3: In my head, I probably was like, well, it doesn't
Speaker 3: matter that I'm agay because I actually know how to behave,
Speaker 3: and I probably know how to behave better than your
Speaker 3: average person. So I've always got that as a bit
Speaker 3: of a shield.
Speaker 1: And where were you when you decided to come out?
Speaker 1: If you don't mind shit? Like was it?
Speaker 3: I was at home in the summer between we would
Speaker 3: call it year eleven, so I was sixteen in the
Speaker 3: summer between year eleven year twelve. We were waiting for
Speaker 3: my GCSE results, which are the exams that you do
Speaker 3: at that age. And I was not a natural academic.
Speaker 3: I wasn't at the class dunce. But you know, I
Speaker 3: was an average student and I was very tense, as indeed,
Speaker 3: I'm sure everybody is tense waiting for exam results. So
Speaker 3: there was quite a lot of heightened tension as we
Speaker 3: got closer, and I just sort of finally snapped and
Speaker 3: just thought, I just tell my parents. I think we
Speaker 3: were having an argument, which is unusual because I didn't read.
Speaker 3: I was very apparently I was quite a placid child.
Speaker 3: But I think we were having a slight argument and
Speaker 3: I was losing, and I thought, I need something the
Speaker 3: grenade to throw in to distract from the fact I'm
Speaker 3: losing this argument. Oh, I know what I threw in,
Speaker 3: the gay thing to forget what the argument was about.
Speaker 1: So one of the things we're sort of thinking about
Speaker 1: in this episode is this idea that etiquette can be
Speaker 1: a way to sort of cope when things feel really uncertain.
Speaker 1: And I feel like the times right now are feeling
Speaker 1: just incredibly uncertain. I feel like especially in the US
Speaker 1: right now, but probably all over the world. Do you
Speaker 1: have this says that etiquette can be used to kind
Speaker 1: of give structure when things feel out of control.
Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely, it's parameters. It's just knowing what is expected
Speaker 3: of us, what is expected of other people. And I
Speaker 3: think children supposedly like framework, and they are given a
Speaker 3: framework at school and at homes to what is expected
Speaker 3: of them. Not everybody is, but generally most children are.
Speaker 3: I'm not a child psychologist, but I think child psychologists
Speaker 3: would agree that most children do thrive with frameworks and
Speaker 3: guidelines and knowing what is expected of them. And I
Speaker 3: think the same is true with adults as well. It's
Speaker 3: a different framework, it's a different form of expectations, it's
Speaker 3: more advanced in many ways. But I think actually sort
Speaker 3: of having a rock to cling on to in uncertain times,
Speaker 3: I don't think that's a bad thing.
Speaker 1: So how do you define etiquette because I think a
Speaker 1: lot of lay people, people who have not been as
Speaker 1: well versed in etiquette as you might, kind of misunderstand
Speaker 1: what it's about.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, and look, people misunderstand etiquette on a daily basis.
Speaker 3: Doesn't help that etiquette as a word is an old
Speaker 3: French word. It sounds terribly posh and it does go
Speaker 3: back to the Court of lou the fourteenth in France
Speaker 3: as a word, but it is just about treating people
Speaker 3: with respect, tolerance, compassion, civility, charm, grace, whatever similar word
Speaker 3: you want to put in. And anyone who sort of
Speaker 3: says that we don't need to do that needs to
Speaker 3: be very politely. Just ushered off the planet, really, because
Speaker 3: it would be a horrible place if we were treating
Speaker 3: people without any of.
Speaker 1: Those I mean, I agree that we want to treat
Speaker 1: people nicely, but maybe just because I'm an American, I
Speaker 1: feel like, at least before I read your book, I
Speaker 1: had this knee jerk reaction against etiquette. It just felt
Speaker 1: a way that people were being overbearing or kind of
Speaker 1: holier than now, Like it seems like, Okay, we need
Speaker 1: to treat people nicely, but do we need to care
Speaker 1: where the fish fork is and where it goes on
Speaker 1: the plate and stuff. Tell me about the history of
Speaker 1: why etiquette kind of peaked in the aristocracy and kind
Speaker 1: why it started there, and why maybe those of us
Speaker 1: who are maybe not so aristocratic need to give it
Speaker 1: a chance.
Speaker 3: I would say that humans back in the days of
Speaker 3: cave people were forming a social construction as to how
Speaker 3: you should behave, who got access to the meat first, etc.
Speaker 3: So in terms of being codified and written down, it
Speaker 3: was literally the fourteenth and fifteenth as I mentioned in France,
Speaker 3: who really structured it more or less like we have
Speaker 3: today are as closest to However, there it was quite exclusive.
Speaker 3: It was designed to exclude and if you didn't follow
Speaker 3: this code, you were demoted down the court life and
Speaker 3: they would have rules on how many ruffles your sleeves
Speaker 3: or collars would have depending on your status and what
Speaker 3: part of the grand levee, which was lewis sort of
Speaker 3: mourning ritual, which sounds hideous. Baby, all these people watched
Speaker 3: them get out of bed. I mean, I don't know
Speaker 3: about you, but I don't want anyone watching and get
Speaker 3: out of bed. To be fair, it wasn't him actually
Speaker 3: getting out of bed. He got out of bed ten
Speaker 3: minutes before and then got into another bed. But still
Speaker 3: there was this sort of ritual and if you were
Speaker 3: in that room you had all the highest statuses in
Speaker 3: the court. So there it was exclusive. But as life
Speaker 3: has progressed and we sort of finessed it, I would
Speaker 3: say now good etiquette and manners, when practiced, are inclusive.
Speaker 3: They are there to bring people together to help us,
Speaker 3: so we know what to do and what is expected
Speaker 3: of us. France don't have a monarch anymore, British monarchy.
Speaker 3: It's a very different monarchy from hundreds of years ago.
Speaker 3: No royal family anywhere in the world is now making
Speaker 3: up the rules as to how to behave I would
Speaker 3: say now, etiquet is quite democratic, and we the people
Speaker 3: are discovering through trial and error often what we like
Speaker 3: as a group of people and what we don't like
Speaker 3: as a group of people, and it will always change.
Speaker 3: Etiquette will evolve and develop as humans walk the earth
Speaker 3: and whoever doing your and my jobs. In two hundred
Speaker 3: years time, we'll be talking about a completely different type
Speaker 3: of etiquette than what we're talking about today.
Speaker 2: If it's okay with you, we're going to take a
Speaker 2: short break, but we'll return in a moment so William
Speaker 2: can explain how following a few rules can help your
Speaker 2: next social gathering.
Speaker 1: Go with this wing, the Happiness Lab.
Speaker 3: Will be right back.
Speaker 2: If you listen to recent episodes of the Happiness Lab,
Speaker 2: you may have heard that sharing meals is a great
Speaker 2: way to create stronger bonds with the people around you
Speaker 2: and to feel happier. But a lot of us find
Speaker 2: organizing a dinner party or entertaining in our homes to
Speaker 2: be a bit daunting and get expert. William Hansen says
Speaker 2: a few simple rules can help, and he should know
Speaker 2: because his homeland, the United Kingdom, has had quite the
Speaker 2: history when it comes to table manners.
Speaker 3: We are a tiny, tiny, tiny country in comparison to
Speaker 3: let's say America or China or France, our nearest country,
Speaker 3: it is at least double the size, and thus we're
Speaker 3: much closer to the people that we live with. We're
Speaker 3: all living on top of each other. Thus we have
Speaker 3: to get on quite nicely. And you know, we're very
Speaker 3: fortunate in this country. Our weather is fairly gland. We
Speaker 3: don't have hurricanes, we don't have tsunamis, we don't have earthquakes,
Speaker 3: and so we don't have anything else to worry about particularly,
Speaker 3: and we're very fortunate, again, very fortunate that it's generally
Speaker 3: a nice country. So yes, we sort of thus have
Speaker 3: had the time and the headspace to develop this code.
Speaker 3: And yes, our food was historically, I mean it has
Speaker 3: dramatically changed in the last forty years, but historically our
Speaker 3: food was fairly plain, and so you can see why
Speaker 3: you might want to develop a series of rules to
Speaker 3: slow down how to eat it because it was wasn't
Speaker 3: the most delicious, and maybe.
Speaker 1: Make it more festive, to hence the exciting napkin collection.
Speaker 3: I guess right, well, exactly, yes, And you know, and
Speaker 3: again there's a logic, particularly with dining, there is for
Speaker 3: most things, there is a logic behind them. The knife
Speaker 3: goes on the right hand side because that was your
Speaker 3: sword carrying hand. Historically, that's why most people were right handed,
Speaker 3: and certain religions would say that anything held in the
Speaker 3: left hand it was the hand of the devil. So
Speaker 3: thus fawks for many years were considered very suspicious of
Speaker 3: you using a fork. You used your hand and a knife.
Speaker 3: And then when various religions realized that actually, if you
Speaker 3: used a fork, there was actually nothing wrong with you,
Speaker 3: and actually thought was quite helpful. And so you know,
Speaker 3: the napkin of whatever size is there to protect your
Speaker 3: clothing and to take any sort of residue off your lips.
Speaker 3: So most things have been developed with a logic, and
Speaker 3: it's normally those that don't understand the logic whose default
Speaker 3: reaction is, well, it doesn't matter. Well it does, it's
Speaker 3: just that it hasn't been explained to you correctly, or
Speaker 3: you've had some negative experience where someone else has used
Speaker 3: etiquette for bad not for good.
Speaker 1: Okay, can I talk to you about some of the
Speaker 1: things I learned in your book that I want to
Speaker 1: share with my listeners because it was like mind blown,
Speaker 1: like I had no idea where these things come from.
Speaker 3: Right, Yes, I love it.
Speaker 1: So one of my favorites which comes up for me
Speaker 1: in my own dining as a kid was the no
Speaker 1: elbows on a table. Well, I just thought this was
Speaker 1: a completely arbitrary thing that you know, parents and nana's
Speaker 1: come up with to like yell at the kids at
Speaker 1: like the Thanksgiving table. But it turns out no elbows
Speaker 1: on the table very functional.
Speaker 3: Why yes, So that goes back to the sort of
Speaker 3: medieval dining in the Middle Ages and the sort of
Speaker 3: fifteen hundreds where you would have trestle tables with sheets
Speaker 3: of wood, and they were created for the meals that
Speaker 3: they had, and they only ate twice a day back then,
Speaker 3: so they weren't having three meals a day. These tables
Speaker 3: were cleared away and then basically these multi purpose rooms
Speaker 3: then became bedrooms and you'd sleep on the floor. And
Speaker 3: so the food again we ate not like now, it's
Speaker 3: almost sort of a big buffet style that the food
Speaker 3: was laid down the center of the table carefully balanced
Speaker 3: so the table did not tip, so all the heavy
Speaker 3: stuff was down the very middle of the table. So
Speaker 3: if you put your elbows on the table and put
Speaker 3: particular weight, particularly if you were an adult, the table
Speaker 3: would probably tip. And so it became the etiquette to
Speaker 3: not put your elbows on the table. And yes, so
Speaker 3: many people think, oh gosh, I can hear my mother,
Speaker 3: my father, my grandparents saying that to me. I would
Speaker 3: also say, it's actually terribly difficult to eat with your
Speaker 3: elbows on the table. If you're using a knife and fork,
Speaker 3: the angles don't align. Having your elbows on the table
Speaker 3: at the end of a meal, perhaps if I've come
Speaker 3: around to your house, Storry, and we finished eating, we're
Speaker 3: having a cup of coffee at the end, or a
Speaker 3: cocktail or whatever, if you've got your elbows on the table.
Speaker 3: As a host, I would say, as a guest, that's
Speaker 3: fair enough, I can put my elbows on the table,
Speaker 3: But actually during a formal meal, no, And I.
Speaker 1: Have to say, like, even in grad school, I had
Speaker 1: some tables that might not have been like medieval, but
Speaker 1: they were cheap things that could.
Speaker 3: Fall part exact.
Speaker 1: So I love this one. Another thing that I learned
Speaker 1: from your book book makes sense at least the right
Speaker 1: time was seating charts This is another thing I never knew.
Speaker 1: As a Yelle professor, I sometimes have to go to
Speaker 1: these formal dinners where everybody has to sit in this
Speaker 1: specific spot, and I was kind of like, who cares?
Speaker 1: Then I learned that this too came from important times
Speaker 1: back in the day, because as you mentioned before, of
Speaker 1: the swords, so explain why the guest of honor is
Speaker 1: often sitting in a very specific spot at the right
Speaker 1: hand side of the table and kind of where that
Speaker 1: came from.
Speaker 3: Yes, so it's always the host's immediate right is where
Speaker 3: you put the guest of honor And actually, if you
Speaker 3: look at the White House, as you said, have the
Speaker 3: photographs of those two armchairs that are in front of
Speaker 3: the fire and the oval office, the President is always
Speaker 3: on camera right and to his right is always the
Speaker 3: visiting head of state. However it is, and that was
Speaker 3: because your sword was on your left hip, and so
Speaker 3: if someone was sort of going to attack you, you
Speaker 3: would draw your sword and protect them, so it would
Speaker 3: be across your guest of honor or whether you were protecting.
Speaker 3: And that's also why I mean Britain gets a bad
Speaker 3: rap for driving on the left, whereas everyone other other
Speaker 3: countries drive on the right. Should just say that all
Speaker 3: countries drove on the left historically, and it wasn't driving,
Speaker 3: it was horse and cart. And you did that because
Speaker 3: again for necessity, because if someone was a highwayman was
Speaker 3: going to attack you, you would take out the sword. And
Speaker 3: it was Napoleon and the French who thought they hated us,
Speaker 3: so we'll just switch sides to annoy them. And lots
Speaker 3: of other countries shocked, didn't like the British either, so
Speaker 3: they copied suit as well. Everyone else changed it, not else.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I didn't know it was driving that was
Speaker 1: about swords, but I love that it was. Formal dinners
Speaker 1: were about swords, but there was.
Speaker 3: So much of etique. Is it about sort? It's quite violent?
Speaker 1: Actually, it actually makes so much sense. Okay. The other
Speaker 1: fancy dress thing that I loved you explaining, which has
Speaker 1: to do again with formal seating, is why so many
Speaker 1: of the formal dinners I go to, including weddings, are
Speaker 1: sat boy girl boy girl, which felt very gender and
Speaker 1: very weird. Why do we have to do that?
Speaker 3: Yes, so sort of at the start of the Georgian
Speaker 3: period of history in Britain, so George the first it
Speaker 3: was all men down one side, all women down the
Speaker 3: other side of the table, and you didn't have the
Speaker 3: concept of dating we have now and courtship, and so
Speaker 3: as life began to progress, they thought, well, actually, let's
Speaker 3: sort of alternate the genders. Obviously it was George in England,
Speaker 3: and they assumed that there were just two genders, which
Speaker 3: we can unpick that another time, but just we're going
Speaker 3: with what they believed. So it was this boy girl,
Speaker 3: boy girl, which I think is probably preferable to all
Speaker 3: men down one side, all women down another. And the
Speaker 3: etiquette was that if you were married, you were actually
Speaker 3: seated apart from each other, not drastically far apart, just
Speaker 3: a little bit. So you can talk to other people
Speaker 3: because you do live with them, so you might want
Speaker 3: a bit of a change. As much as we love
Speaker 3: our spouses, if you were engaged. If we look at
Speaker 3: Elizabeth and mister Darcy in Pride and Bridges, you know
Speaker 3: they won't going off to the cinema and sitting in
Speaker 3: an olive god and having a nice get to know
Speaker 3: you dinner. There was none of that. Really. They just
Speaker 3: saw each other at balls and might have had tea
Speaker 3: with the family, and then suddenly they were going to
Speaker 3: spend the rest of their life together. So hostesses would
Speaker 3: put these couples next to each other at dinner so
Speaker 3: at least they could have some sort of private conversation.
Speaker 3: Say now, you don't need to do such gendered stric seating.
Speaker 3: I would just say, just balance it, try not to
Speaker 3: have clusters of any particular genda all in one bit
Speaker 3: to the detriment of another space on the table. I
Speaker 3: love my husband's pieces, but I don't actually want to
Speaker 3: sit next to me to dinner because I want to
Speaker 3: be able to in the car on the way home
Speaker 3: go guess what I learned tonight and be able to
Speaker 3: share on swap stories. But equally, if I was going
Speaker 3: to a dinner where I knew nobody else other than
Speaker 3: my husband and the host, actually, then I do want
Speaker 3: to sit next to my husband. Probably probably not always,
Speaker 3: So we can take a lot from where we have
Speaker 3: come from in order to work out what we like
Speaker 3: from back then what we don't like, and also create
Speaker 3: our owner to get as well.
Speaker 1: Can I ask it different? I think you mentioned in
Speaker 1: the book that another reason for the boy girl boy
Speaker 1: girl thing with that women's dresses were just enormous and
Speaker 1: that they couldn't fit.
Speaker 3: So you know, again sort of Georgian and and Elizabethan,
Speaker 3: sort of like Victorian era. Your early Victorian era women's
Speaker 3: dresses were so voluminous, often with hoops, and they could
Speaker 3: actually physically get to the table, so you would have
Speaker 3: to have somebody not wearing such a luminous outfit I men,
Speaker 3: to assist you getting in and out of the chair. Yeah,
Speaker 3: the pulling out of the chair was not because the
Speaker 3: women were the weaker sex or anything like that. It
Speaker 3: which is out of absolute necessity because women couldn't physically
Speaker 3: do it. And then obviously when dresses became a lot
Speaker 3: more practical, you sort of still did that as a
Speaker 3: bit of a nod to where we had come from. Today,
Speaker 3: some people like it, some people hate it. I would say,
Speaker 3: just pull out a chair for anyone you're sitting next to,
Speaker 3: however they identify. And actually I saw the other day
Speaker 3: a woman pulled out the chair for her husband and
Speaker 3: who was a man, and I thought, gosh, that's lovely.
Speaker 3: There's nothing wrong with it. Again, we're still sort of
Speaker 3: tipping the hat to where we've come from, So yeah,
Speaker 3: do it for any fellow human being.
Speaker 1: And the huge dress thing gets to something we've already
Speaker 1: talked about, which is the importance of napkins of different sizes.
Speaker 1: Another thing I didn't realize with the different size napkins
Speaker 1: also actually had a function too.
Speaker 3: Yes, so you had the largest dinner size napkins, which
Speaker 3: were between twenty four and twenty six centimeters. I think
Speaker 3: you work in inches so colleges, but they were the largest,
Speaker 3: and so they would sort of be completely over the
Speaker 3: ball gown because you were wearing this huge ball gown
Speaker 3: and so you would need a larger napkin to cover it.
Speaker 1: Now, if I look through your book in all the
Speaker 1: domains where we see these etiquette rules popping up, they
Speaker 1: happen in all parts of life, but they seem to
Speaker 1: crop up especially at these moments of rights of passage,
Speaker 1: right weddings, funerals, these big scary state dinners, And that
Speaker 1: seems like exactly the time psychologically where you might want
Speaker 1: more of the structure to reduce uncertainty. Is that your
Speaker 1: sense of kind of how these rituals developed is that
Speaker 1: they were kind of during these moments of uncertainty.
Speaker 3: Yes, I think so, And I think probably the hatched
Speaker 3: matched and dispatched points of our lives are probably when
Speaker 3: you know, we have large groups of people that come together,
Speaker 3: particularly for the wedding one, and you've got lots of
Speaker 3: different personalities, lots of different family dynamics, and always have
Speaker 3: done as far as sort of matrimony has been the thing,
Speaker 3: And so that's why these rules have popped up in particular,
Speaker 3: and you know, everyone's got an opinion, particularly on weddings.
Speaker 1: I also think you see this just in times where
Speaker 1: they are these subtle things about the psychoology that are
Speaker 1: hard to understand, but if you just stick a rule in,
Speaker 1: you can sort of protect people. One of my favorite
Speaker 1: examples that my colleague Dave Disteno, the psychologist who studies rituals,
Speaker 1: talks a lot about is in moments of death and
Speaker 1: certain rituals that come up during grieving. He talks about
Speaker 1: a case in Shiva and the Jewish tradition where during
Speaker 1: the period of mourning you're supposed to cover up all
Speaker 1: the mirrors in the house, which kind of seem like
Speaker 1: a very strange etiquette rule or ritual, but it turns
Speaker 1: out that seeing yourself being sad or seeing yourself being
Speaker 1: anxious in a mirror amplifies that sense of being sad
Speaker 1: or being anxious, And so the Shiva tradition of covering
Speaker 1: up the mirrors makes all the grievers not kind of
Speaker 1: compound their grief just by seeing how messed up you
Speaker 1: look and how sad you look all the time. Any
Speaker 1: other examples kind of like this that come up in
Speaker 1: more traditional etiquette moments where it seems like it's about
Speaker 1: kind of protecting people psychologically in ways that we might
Speaker 1: not expect.
Speaker 3: Yes, and that fundamentally I mean and also said, a
Speaker 3: lot of our more traditional has come from religion, whichever
Speaker 3: religion that is, and I would say most religions do
Speaker 3: share the same core principles. But yes, it is just
Speaker 3: a consideration for other people before ourselves. And the idea
Speaker 3: is that I'm pushing you first and you're pushing me first,
Speaker 3: and it's this nice homogeneous unit that is the idea.
Speaker 3: And actually the Shiver thing reminds me of For many years,
Speaker 3: I was really reticent to post videos of myself on
Speaker 3: social media doing etiquette tips, which is something that's very
Speaker 3: commonplace now for lots of people in whatever industry. But
Speaker 3: I was really reluctant because I don't think it is
Speaker 3: healthy to constantly look at yourself, whether you've got an
Speaker 3: ego or you're insecure or not. I think it can
Speaker 3: be quite harmful, and so I take away mirrors generally
Speaker 3: to be honest, whether we're grieving or not.
Speaker 1: So sometimes etiquette comes up in these big, scary times,
Speaker 1: the what did you say, hatched catched hatch, Yes, so
Speaker 1: ednikie comes up in these hatched, matched and dispatched times.
Speaker 1: But there are lots of times that are a little
Speaker 1: bit anxiety provoking what we're engaging in social connection, And
Speaker 1: a big one is the dinner. Talk about some strategies
Speaker 1: that can reduce uncertainty during moments of dinner. I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about well set tables, that kind of thing.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I mean, I think when you arrive to eat,
Speaker 3: whether it's in a restaurant, your friend's house, anywhere, how
Speaker 3: the ground it is. If you know, if the table
Speaker 3: and the room look inviting and it's sort of there's
Speaker 3: been a little bit of consideration into the table setting,
Speaker 3: you're probably a little bit more relaxed than if actually
Speaker 3: all the cutlery is in a pot in the middle
Speaker 3: of the table, some of it's a bit grubby, there's
Speaker 3: a few scraps of something unattractive kitchen towel on the table,
Speaker 3: You think, God, do they even want me here? Have
Speaker 3: they really prepared? Am I being a burden on them?
Speaker 3: And I think hospitality is, whether you're doing it professionally
Speaker 3: or you're doing it sort of socially, is about making
Speaker 3: others feel welcome and relaxed, and thus putting in a
Speaker 3: bit of effort. If you're going to have friends over
Speaker 3: is key. If you don't want to have friends over,
Speaker 3: that's fine. Don't have friends over, go out to a
Speaker 3: restaurant or do it another And then yes, if you're
Speaker 3: eating food and you don't know what to do with
Speaker 3: it and you're presented with something new, don't be afraid
Speaker 3: to ask ask your host, gosh, this sort of delicious?
Speaker 3: How best do you suggest I eat it? Or just
Speaker 3: sort of slightly hang back and just see what everyone
Speaker 3: else is doing. May not be correct, but if they're
Speaker 3: doing it, they going to think it's correct. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm a big believer in the hangback. As someone who
Speaker 1: hasn't studied a lot of etiquette in this American but
Speaker 1: finds myself in lots of these formal moments, I'm a
Speaker 1: big hangbacker and watch what everybody else does, especially for
Speaker 1: the like positioning of the thing. Somehow the bread like
Speaker 1: little dish. I always I never know what's going on.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well with your breadplate, yes, exactly what you need
Speaker 3: to remember is you need to remember BMW motor cars.
Speaker 3: So as you look at your place setting B for bread,
Speaker 3: it's on the left, M for meal it's in the middle,
Speaker 3: and W for wine it's on the right. So as
Speaker 3: you sort of sit down, you know that your breadplate
Speaker 3: is on the left. If you start taking bread from
Speaker 3: the right hand side, that someone else's breadplate that's stealing.
Speaker 3: That's very bad matters. So your breadplated.
Speaker 1: As happened recently, it was giving a talk and we're
Speaker 1: at a restaurant and they, you know, have the bread
Speaker 1: plates set up, and I was like, which side should
Speaker 1: I be taking it from? Which side should I be
Speaker 1: taking it from? And I realized they just set the
Speaker 1: wrong number of bread plates, so there's one in too few,
Speaker 1: and so I was like, I did the math, and
Speaker 1: I was like, wait a minute, okay, this is not me.
Speaker 3: This is yes, this is something that I have more
Speaker 3: and more frequently as I write about these rules, whether
Speaker 3: it's in just cod manners or doing a video on
Speaker 3: Instagram or whatever teaching, and it's all very while we going, well,
Speaker 3: this is this is how glasses are arranged, or this
Speaker 3: is how cutler is arranged. But if the restaurant or
Speaker 3: your friends has not done it properly, you might actually
Speaker 3: what I have told you to do might be complete rubbish.
Speaker 1: Like bmw B You're like, wait, MWB, I don't know
Speaker 1: what's going on. It's not very confusing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, Yes, So I would always you know, And
Speaker 3: I think that's why it's good to sort of know
Speaker 3: what the etiquette should be, and then you can either
Speaker 3: choose to apply it or you go, do you know
Speaker 3: what wrong setting here? Tear it up and do something else.
Speaker 1: I love this idea of just kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: making the table so beautiful and having all the napkins
Speaker 1: and so on. But one of the things we've talked
Speaker 1: about in this sh show is this idea of sort
Speaker 1: of scruffy hospitality, that social connection is so important and
Speaker 1: the loneliness is so prevalent that you shouldn't let kind
Speaker 1: of worries about cleanliness and worries about having the perfect
Speaker 1: table setting come up any advice there of how you
Speaker 1: can kind of be minimum about the etiquette stuff and
Speaker 1: like the table settings and the fanciness, but still kind
Speaker 1: of get the social connection in and still get the
Speaker 1: hospitality into.
Speaker 3: Well. One of the things that I see a lot of,
Speaker 3: particularly if people haven't hosted an awful lot, and good
Speaker 3: on them for trying. And we've all had our first
Speaker 3: dinner party and for most of us it probably went horrifically.
Speaker 3: But like anything, the more you do it, the better
Speaker 3: you get. But don't run before you can walk. If
Speaker 3: you're dining table seats for it a push, don't invite five.
Speaker 3: I mean, it is extraordinary how many it's happening less
Speaker 3: now as I'm getting older, but how many friends dinner
Speaker 3: parties we've gone to and they've tried to cram it
Speaker 3: in because we want five. Well, we're not comfortable wherever
Speaker 3: we are eating. We want to be comfortable eating, particularly
Speaker 3: as we get older. We want chairs that sort of
Speaker 3: support us and we want to not think, thank God,
Speaker 3: I can go home so comfortable environment. The food does
Speaker 3: not have to be cooked yourself. You can buy it in,
Speaker 3: you can have cooked and the food can be just passible.
Speaker 3: It doesn't need to be delicious, So food that's nice
Speaker 3: but doesn't need to be phenomenal, and you can have
Speaker 3: bought it in a clean table, clean cutlery, clean glassware,
Speaker 3: not glassware where I can see your thumb prints and
Speaker 3: your fingerprints as you've placed it down on the table.
Speaker 3: That's not very appetizing or hygienic. A nice napkin if
Speaker 3: you're going to do paper, because you can't be bothered
Speaker 3: to wash napkins. There are some really good sort of
Speaker 3: three or four ply thicker proper paper napkins you can get.
Speaker 3: Most supermarkets or stores that sell napkins will have them,
Speaker 3: so you can just still throw them out and they
Speaker 3: can be recycled. And if you're going to have music
Speaker 3: on in the background, a lot of people get triggered
Speaker 3: by really loud music, and actually the best soundtrack to
Speaker 3: any sort of party is just people chatting and laughing.
Speaker 3: And actually, so don't spend two days curating the perfect
Speaker 3: dinner party playlist, because we really shouldn't be listening to it.
Speaker 3: We might hear it at the start when there are
Speaker 3: a few of us there, but as the party gets
Speaker 3: into the swing of it, we shouldn't be hearing the
Speaker 3: music so have it there in the background, but really
Speaker 3: on very.
Speaker 2: Low Social gatherings when they go smoothly, can be a
Speaker 2: great source of happiness, and observing a set of agreed
Speaker 2: upon rules without being a jerk about it can help
Speaker 2: ensure that these.
Speaker 1: Interactions go well.
Speaker 2: But that's not the only benefit of taking etiquette more seriously,
Speaker 2: which we'll hear more about after the break. William Hansen's
Speaker 2: new book Just Good Manners taught me that etiquette has
Speaker 2: a lot of unexpected benefits, and one of my favorite
Speaker 2: benefits is that etiquette often acts like a break, which
Speaker 2: can be a good thing when it comes to our happiness.
Speaker 2: Our lives often pass at lightning speed, but if you
Speaker 2: organize a dinner party following William's tips, considering the seeding plan,
Speaker 2: or giving thought to the napkins, you have the time
Speaker 2: needed to anticipate just how fun it'll be. Research shows
Speaker 2: that humans get a happiness boost from this sort of anticipation.
Speaker 2: We also enjoy events way more when we have a
Speaker 2: chance to savor them rather than rushing through everything all
Speaker 2: the time. So does William agree that etiquette can help
Speaker 2: us find room for pause in our hectic lives.
Speaker 3: Yes, and I think it's about just slowing down life.
Speaker 3: And I think, as life is so fast paced now
Speaker 3: compared to how it was in sort of etiquette's heyday,
Speaker 3: I think it's good just to sort of just pause
Speaker 3: and take time. And you know, let's look at communications
Speaker 3: or written communication. We can communicate instantly with people and
Speaker 3: get a response, and that's fantastic and gosh, so many ways.
Speaker 3: But if we had to do it like they did
Speaker 3: in Jane Austen time, where you write a letter and
Speaker 3: then you would wait for it to be collected, which
Speaker 3: might have been the day or the day after that,
Speaker 3: and then it would go of our horse and can't
Speaker 3: to even somewhere within your city, but it could be
Speaker 3: two cities away, and then you know, you might not
Speaker 3: get a response for a month. So you had time.
Speaker 3: They had the luxury. It wasn't considered at the time,
Speaker 3: but they had the luxury of time of considering how
Speaker 3: are we going to respond, what's the best thing to do.
Speaker 3: I need to be concise as well, because I've got
Speaker 3: paper as expensive as well, and we're not going to
Speaker 3: try and keep it as short as possible, whereas now
Speaker 3: we are expected to sort of have the answers immediately
Speaker 3: upon sending a message, and we have to speak and
Speaker 3: hope or write and hope that what we say is
Speaker 3: in some ways comprehensible, not offensive, clear, and it's not
Speaker 3: always going to be possible.
Speaker 1: It also seems like this act of kind of being
Speaker 1: more present can come from the things that I sometimes
Speaker 1: again as my you know, etiquette first American background brought
Speaker 1: me up to be things like dress codes, right, whereas
Speaker 1: I often think of the dress code as something that's
Speaker 1: like overbearing, that's like constraining by freedom and so on.
Speaker 1: But you've argued that it's a way again of kind
Speaker 1: of being a little bit more present, maybe even of
Speaker 1: honoring the people that are kind of throwing whatever event
Speaker 1: this is. Can explain what you mean.
Speaker 3: Again, if you have been invited to a party, someone
Speaker 3: has spent money presumably or time and effort on looking
Speaker 3: after you and taking interest in you and wanting you
Speaker 3: to have a nice time, and so by doing things
Speaker 3: correctly and honoring it and following what is expected of you,
Speaker 3: you are honoring them and the friendship rather than this
Speaker 3: sort of well, actually I don't want to do that.
Speaker 3: I'm just going to ignore that and thinking somehow that
Speaker 3: someone is above the rules.
Speaker 1: So it seems like one of the ways that etiquette
Speaker 1: can really help us is doing this sort of honoring,
Speaker 1: is this kind of other oriented take on how you
Speaker 1: should behave in these kinds of settings.
Speaker 3: And I would say also treating people with respect is
Speaker 3: a constant. How we treat people with respect might have
Speaker 3: changed over time from the time of George the Third
Speaker 3: to now, and it will always change. Etiquette as a
Speaker 3: shape shifter. And it would be ridiculous for me to
Speaker 3: say what's published in Just Good Manners in one hundred
Speaker 3: years time, every single sentence I write is going to
Speaker 3: be exactly the same. I think the core principles hopefully
Speaker 3: will be the same, but it will change. Yes, I
Speaker 3: think just I think it is important, particularly when the
Speaker 3: world around us, our social, political, diplom life might be
Speaker 3: incredibly uncertain. It is the easy thing to do would
Speaker 3: be to sync to that level. Life is not easy.
Speaker 3: We know that, and actually what we need to do
Speaker 3: is raise people to a slightly higher standard, particularly those
Speaker 3: in higher office. And I can see why some people
Speaker 3: whichever country, in so many countries have you know, it's
Speaker 3: not peachy for everybody, But I can see why a
Speaker 3: lot of people think well, why should I be nice?
Speaker 3: You can be a bit of a brute, or you
Speaker 3: can be a bit of a bully or say the
Speaker 3: wrong thing, and you can get to the highest office
Speaker 3: in the hand. It applies to many, many heads of stake, and.
Speaker 1: What we know from the science is that this is
Speaker 1: very effective in terms of boosting people's happiness. I think
Speaker 1: we assume, with so much in the world right now
Speaker 1: talking about self care and treating yourself, that kind of
Speaker 1: being as selfish as possible when it comes to food
Speaker 1: or whatever, it would make us feel good. But study
Speaker 1: after study shows that doing nice things for others, whether
Speaker 1: it's spending money on other people, doing kind of like
Speaker 1: charity acts for other individuals, that makes us feel better
Speaker 1: than doing for ourselves. So another thing that you talk
Speaker 1: a lot about in terms of being a good guest
Speaker 1: that really resonates with the science is the importance of
Speaker 1: expressing gratitude. And you are a big fan I know
Speaker 1: of the thank you letter? Why or thank you letters
Speaker 1: so important? So powerful?
Speaker 3: I think they're more powerful now in an era where
Speaker 3: so little is handwritten by hand most things aren't emails.
Speaker 3: I think actually to have something, I think it shows
Speaker 3: more effort I mean, that's id rather someone emailed me
Speaker 3: a thank you than literally avoid of silence, but for
Speaker 3: someone to actually put pen to paper and to pay
Speaker 3: for a stamp, which I'm sure in your country but's
Speaker 3: definitely ours. Stamps cost rise and rise and rise almost
Speaker 3: every every six months. But actually to sort of have
Speaker 3: taken a moment to put in a little bit of
Speaker 3: effort to say thank you, especially if the effort has
Speaker 3: been quite considerable on my part. Just as to scriggle
Speaker 3: a few lines, I think is so nice and I
Speaker 3: think it carries more clout and base if it gets
Speaker 3: you brownie points more than if you just said send
Speaker 3: a quick sort of DM to go, yeah, thanks so
Speaker 3: much for dinner, see you soon, kiss, which you've probably
Speaker 3: written lying in bed, picking your nose, thinking about what
Speaker 3: you're going to have for breakfast in the morning. It's
Speaker 3: not quite the same.
Speaker 1: You've seen the benefit of these brownie points kind of,
Speaker 1: I guess secondhand with your friend Daphne. Tell me the
Speaker 1: story of Daphne and why her thank you notes were
Speaker 1: so powerful.
Speaker 3: Daphne is a gorgeous, gorgeous person. She's now in her nineties,
Speaker 3: and when I first stayed with Japhanne in her early agies.
Speaker 3: I was not living in London at the time, but
Speaker 3: I was working in London a lot, and so if
Speaker 3: i'd have an early start, I would stay with Daphne.
Speaker 3: And Daphne told me the following story, and I should
Speaker 3: say Daphne's house beautiful, Mary Poppins esque, Chelsea townhouse gorgeous.
Speaker 3: And Daphne and her twin sister grew up outside of London,
Speaker 3: in the north of England, and every Christmas was sent
Speaker 3: a one pound note. No, we don't have one pound
Speaker 3: notes anymore, but back then, ninety five years ago, a
Speaker 3: one pound note was a lot of money, particularly for
Speaker 3: two girls to be getting. They would each get it
Speaker 3: and they would sort of once they got to four
Speaker 3: or five, they would start squiggling a little thank you
Speaker 3: letter to say thank you to this great aunt who
Speaker 3: was sending them the money. And sort of, as they
Speaker 3: got older, they'd begun to understand that this great aunt
Speaker 3: was persona and on grata with the family. There was
Speaker 3: some family feud. You just did not talk about this
Speaker 3: great aunt. And as Daphne and her sister were now
Speaker 3: in their twenties, they were living in London, they thought, well, look,
Speaker 3: we'll put in our thank you letters that we don't
Speaker 3: care what this argument was, We don't know. Can we
Speaker 3: take you up for lunch please to say thank you properly.
Speaker 3: Never did they get a response, and then one year
Speaker 3: Daphne's sister said, look, I'm going to stop writing because
Speaker 3: I sort of it's embarrassing. It's not worth as much
Speaker 3: as it was. We're earning money. She never had no
Speaker 3: other contact with her. I sort of want her to
Speaker 3: save her money and give it to someone else. So
Speaker 3: she stopped writing. Daphne continued and still for about five
Speaker 3: or six more years, they were both sent their one
Speaker 3: pound note, and shortly after one Christmas they received nothing.
Speaker 3: And then after Christmas, Definitely received a phone call to Sam,
Speaker 3: so sorry to tell you that your great aunt has
Speaker 3: died and in her will she has left you her
Speaker 3: Chelsea townhouse. It's because you always wrote a thank you letter.
Speaker 3: The sister was not left anything. Yeah, exactly, And so
Speaker 3: I always write to Definitely when I stay with her,
Speaker 3: because you never know.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. I mean, I think you know, that's a
Speaker 1: case of getting brownie points, you know, like literal brownie
Speaker 1: points from the person you send a thank you letter
Speaker 1: to But psychologically, there's lots of evidence that we get
Speaker 1: these kind of happiness boosting Brownie points just because the
Speaker 1: act of writing a thank you letter to someone else,
Speaker 1: especially in researchers looked at this, a byhand thank you
Speaker 1: letter that you put some detail into it wounds up
Speaker 1: not just making the person who receives a letter happy,
Speaker 1: it makes you happy too. In fact, a study by
Speaker 1: Marty Seligman and colleagues fines that the boost in happiness
Speaker 1: you get small but significant boost and happiness you get
Speaker 1: last for somewhere between one to three months, which is
Speaker 1: sort of incredible, right, It's like this really long standing
Speaker 1: little boost and happiness that we get from a handwritten
Speaker 1: thank you letter.
Speaker 3: And so I love love, I love That's that's great
Speaker 3: to know. And actually so strongly do I believe in
Speaker 3: the thank you letter thing. When we were doing the
Speaker 3: book for America because it came out in Britain last year,
Speaker 3: I said to Gallery Simon and Schuster, the publishers, and said, look,
Speaker 3: can I do an appendix which I should have done
Speaker 3: for the UK book, but I didn't think of it
Speaker 3: at the time of sample thank you letters because sometimes
Speaker 3: people say to me Oh, yeah, well I don't know
Speaker 3: what to say, which I don't think is much of
Speaker 3: an excuse. I mean, whisper it quietly. I mean, you
Speaker 3: can get AI to help you write a thank you
Speaker 3: letter if you really really are struggling, you know, and
Speaker 3: AI help thank you letters better than nothing. So yes,
Speaker 3: I've done this sort of additional appendix of all different
Speaker 3: scenarios and just things just to help inspire people so
Speaker 3: they know sort of how long they should be writing
Speaker 3: and what sort of tone it should take.
Speaker 1: It's funny that we have such trouble with thank you letters,
Speaker 1: because I think we don't have that much trouble with
Speaker 1: the opposite, which is like writing complaint letters or complaint
Speaker 1: reviews on Yelp or something like that. It seems like
Speaker 1: the negative part of it comes really easily to us.
Speaker 1: But you have a little etiquette suggestion here as well.
Speaker 1: You know that we should try to limit our complaints generally,
Speaker 1: or at least try to balance our complaints with the positives.
Speaker 3: I think it should be a two to one ratio
Speaker 3: at minimum.
Speaker 1: So we've talked so much about these kinds of traditions
Speaker 1: that have come, you know, from back in the day,
Speaker 1: from our time of swords and aristocracy and so on.
Speaker 1: You've noticed that etiquette is changing and probably will change.
Speaker 1: If we add this podcast in two hundred years, none
Speaker 1: of what we said might be the same. Where are
Speaker 1: the domains where you think it's changing, especially in some
Speaker 1: of these spots where we might be dealing with kind
Speaker 1: of new moments of uncertainty or new sort of social
Speaker 1: times that feel potentially fraud.
Speaker 3: I think attitudes and more enlightened approaches generally to gender
Speaker 3: I think is changing etiquette certainly. You know, I've taught
Speaker 3: etiquette for nearly twenty years, and twenty years ago, I
Speaker 3: would have said, socially, in terms of the introduction, precedence,
Speaker 3: deciding who is more important than others in the introduction,
Speaker 3: you've got to save somebody's name first. Obviously in a
Speaker 3: business gender is irrelevant to age. But socially, twenty years
Speaker 3: ago you would have looked at age and gender. So
Speaker 3: Granny being eighty is lifted beyond Annie, who's eighteen. So
Speaker 3: you would say, Granny man, produce Annie. It's Granny is old.
Speaker 3: But if you had Anie and you had Matthew, you
Speaker 3: would have gone historically, Annie man introduced Matthew, and you
Speaker 3: would have risen any and not Matthew. I think that
Speaker 3: I think age is still socially is still looked at,
Speaker 3: and that's fair enough. I say it's fair enough. Come
Speaker 3: back to me in twenty years I might have had
Speaker 3: an epiphany and'd say it's not. But the gender one
Speaker 3: we are completely as we are more accepting and more
Speaker 3: aware of different genders. We are just revising that and
Speaker 3: the weight that we give that. And sometimes it will
Speaker 3: be correct in the introduction to do it that way,
Speaker 3: but not always. And actually it's probably moving towards a
Speaker 3: more business orientated structure. Of it goes on rank or position. Socially,
Speaker 3: we don't of course have ranks. I mean we do
Speaker 3: in Britain because we have the aristocracy, but they are
Speaker 3: infant to some in comparison to the general population.
Speaker 1: Do you think that we're going to be developing new
Speaker 1: etiquette rules for new technologies? The folks that open ai
Speaker 1: sort of issued this plea asking, hey, when you talk
Speaker 1: to chat GPT, can you not tell them please and
Speaker 1: thank you because just like those words take up so
Speaker 1: much space in a it's like so much computing power
Speaker 1: for open ai to kind of deal with the thank you,
Speaker 1: so that just people just deleted them. It would be
Speaker 1: faster and would save you know, whole rainforest of computing
Speaker 1: power and stuff. And I just found, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: it's so hard for us to shut off these etiquette
Speaker 1: rules even when we're talking to an AI and I
Speaker 1: hope we don't. I hope we keep our please and
Speaker 1: thank you when we're talking to Claude and chat GPT
Speaker 1: and so on.
Speaker 3: Exactly. Yes, ignore what open a I say. Please keep
Speaker 3: saying please and thank you to your smart speaker. I
Speaker 3: mean I still will ask whatever my smart speaker is called,
Speaker 3: I won't say it. Now you do this please wich,
Speaker 3: I think. Is it's nice, It's we need to sort
Speaker 3: of keep the reflex and keep the politeness muscle honed.
Speaker 1: Hopefully we can write her a thank you letter too,
Speaker 1: because she does so much for us.
Speaker 3: A smart speaker, gratefully, gratefully receive it.
Speaker 1: And this as a last question, lightning around top three
Speaker 1: etiquette tips that you wish everyone knows.
Speaker 3: Well, Yeah, you don't need to have read just good
Speaker 3: man as, gone to an etiquette class or gone, you know,
Speaker 3: watched an etique video on Instagram to know you should
Speaker 3: be making eye contact with people when you talk to them,
Speaker 3: especially when you greet them, but also when you talk
Speaker 3: to them. Have a good handshake. Now, culturally what is
Speaker 3: a good handshake changes, but in the West it's basically
Speaker 3: two pumps, locking the fingers and the thumb again, making
Speaker 3: eye contact firm, but not too firm. And try to
Speaker 3: use people's names as much as possible because we respond better.
Speaker 3: Happiness valve is released in US when we hear our
Speaker 3: own name and when it's used and we actually the
Speaker 3: opposite valve. The valve gets turned off when someone gets
Speaker 3: our name wrong. And if I'm allowed a fourth you
Speaker 3: cannot say please or thank you enough.
Speaker 2: And to honor that spirit of politeness, I'd like to
Speaker 2: offer my deepest thanks to William Hansen for such an
Speaker 2: enlightening interview. After chatting with him, I'm going to try
Speaker 2: to embrace the rules of etiquette a bit more because
Speaker 2: a little formality does seem to be a great way
Speaker 2: to show love and respect to the people you care about.
Speaker 2: You know, I might even go out and find some
Speaker 2: cloth napkins. In our next episode on creative coping strategies,
Speaker 2: we'll be moving from the gentility of dining rooms to
Speaker 2: the wilds of mother nature, because I'll be talking with
Speaker 2: someone who finds her comfort in birds.
Speaker 1: That's all.
Speaker 2: Next time on the Happiness Lab with me, Doctor Laurie
Speaker 2: Santos